[Insight-users] RE: installation and configuration on ITK

[Luis Ibanez]

Hi Chen,

You are right,

You don't need CMake for compiling ITK.
You need CMake for *configuring* ITK.

You are probably used to the build process
of many open-source projects that do
something like:

         ./configure
         make
         make install

That's how life is good an easy if you are
lucky enough to be working only on Linux.

However for software packages like ITK that
target a large variety of platforms, a more
generic configuration mechanism is needed.
You need a centralized configuration that can
be adapted to varied platforms such as:

    Linux, gcc
    Linux, Intel compiler
    Sun, gcc
    IRIX, CC
    Mac OS, gcc
    MS-Windows, Borland compiler
    MS-Windows, Intel compiler
    MS-Windows, Cygwin gcc
    MS-Windows, Visual Studio 6
    MS-Windows, Visual Studio 7
    MS-Windows, Visual Studio 7 2003


If you imagine the challenge of creating
a unified configuration that will be
adaptable to all these systems above,
you will understand immediately why CMake
is such a strong and useful tool.

CMake allows to define a unique specification
for the configuration of libraries and
executables, and from this specification it
generates Makefiles for Unix, Workspace files
for VisualStudio,... and so on.

Once you generate the configuration, you proceed
to build ITK with your favorite compiler.

Please let us know if you have further questions.


Enjoy ITK !


   Luis



------------------
Chen,Steven wrote:

> Hi, all
>  
> I feel confused at that: it is a must to use CMake to compile any ITK 
> c++ application?
> you know, ITK application is just c++ program, according to the 
> ITKsoftwareGuide.pdf, i still have to use CMake to build it, can you 
> tell me why?
>  
> Thanks a lot
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing 
> <http://pa . yahoo . com/*http://us . rd . yahoo . com/evt=21260/*http://photos . yahoo . com> 
>